The present invention generally relates to floating gate devices, and more specifically, to oxygen scavenging elements in floating gate devices.
Floating gate devices can be used for long-term nonvolatile information storage. A common type of floating gate is a polysilicon or metal layer surrounded by insulating oxides. Other types of floating gate include an insulator layer with embedded silicon or metal particles (‘nanocrystals’). Charge on the floating gate is stored permanently, providing a long-term memory. Because a large number of electrons can be stored on an integrated circuit capacitor, one can store a nearly continuous analog voltage. Furthermore, the charge on this floating gate can be modified by applying large voltages across a dielectric layer to tunnel electrons though the dielectric, or by adding electrons using hot-electron injection.